C.S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet takes its protagonist to Mars.
Published in 1938, the novel follows Elwin Ransom, a Cambridge philologist who is kidnapped and taken aboard a spacecraft. He discovers that the destination is Malacandra, Lewis’s fictional name for Mars. The planet is inhabited by several intelligent species, and Ransom’s knowledge of language becomes central to his survival and understanding.
Out of the Silent Planet is the first book in Lewis’s Space Trilogy. The other novels are Perelandra, published in 1943, and That Hideous Strength, published in 1945. Together, the books combine planetary adventure with theological, philosophical, and moral questions.
The novel’s Mars is not a realistic account of the planet’s surface. It is a literary world imagined before space exploration transformed scientific knowledge about Mars. “Malacandra” is the fictional planetary name, while Mars is the answer to the astronomical identity of the setting.